


Underphoenix

by ikeracity, isamai



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Leta Lestrange is Dead Unfortunately, M/M, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protective Newt Scamander, Theseus Scamander is a Good Sibling, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-09-29 20:40:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17210564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikeracity/pseuds/ikeracity, https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamai/pseuds/isamai
Summary: Theseus Scamander suffers in the past, now and in the future.Somebody saves him. Maybe?P.S Work is reuploaded after ikeracity fixed every grammar mistake I've made, and there were a lot of them.IKERACITY IS AMAZING!I can't thank you enough.





	Underphoenix

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Недофеникс](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17200766) by [isamai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isamai/pseuds/isamai). 



War is here again. It feels blasphemous, and faces of dead people appear again in front of him. This is Jones, that Scotsman who died the day before war ended – was he a McDonald or McDonnel? This is himself, practically dead, suffocated, blown up on a muggle's landmine.

Saved by some miracle.

He stayed alive in his whole skin, and his face stayed scarless.

They fixed him, but muggles weren’t so fortunate, and if he was one of them, he would become deformed and ugly, and nobody would look at him without pity. He would wear that mask, hiding what had become of his face.

Although Leta had never looked on the surface, she always saw more, saw deeper, saw beyond. She had chosen to stay with him, she wasn’t afraid; she was only glad to be with him. Her quiet laugh was a reward for any mess he managed to untangle at work. Her sense of humour made him a better person. She understood everybody, had sympathy for anyone.  
But never for herself.

One thought about this – and he feels bitterness on his tongue, and his hands are shaking, and he wants to lie down and not to wake up. He doesn’t even have the body to bury, the cold and heavy body he could hold for one last time. He has only the memory of her last words and her last glance.

He never was good at letting himself be sensitive, he buttons all his feelings inside – he’d had to be strong with his careless mother, with his too kind father, with his brother, who has never looked anyone in the eyes. So now he is picking himself up from the pieces, pretending to be whole – but his brother sees him through.  
Suddenly he realizes: he is crying on Newt’s shoulder, which is unacceptable! Doesn’t make sense! He doesn’t have the time for this – or the energy for it.

He doesn’t have the energy for anything at all.

Could Grindelwald lie? Could he just provoke people? After all, muggle casualties were enormous at both Antanta and, of course, the losing side. There before the War were villages and fields turned into a dead zone, where no one could live at least for a hundred years, and there was no magic to heal the land.  
Empires had fallen. People had died – how many lives were wronged, broken, how much grief had The Great War left?

Why? What for? How could destiny dare to behave like that with this world?!

His tears fall like the rain on Newt’s shoulder. Newt is still holding him close like he is one of his beasts. And he – Theseus Scamander, Auror, who had earned countless awards for his strong work ethic, and who had climbed the career ladder very quickly - tries to breathe, but inhales just ash.  
Breathe in. Breathe out – and time moves ahead, not asking for anyone’s permission.

On the way to Scotland he remembers Dumbledore in details – maybe not even Dumbledore, but Albus. He used to informally call him Al, what fascinated him, and not just that. He remembers a few of those short months, when he was tearing himself apart – The War had just ended – when he was drowning in alcohol and having too many one night stands in a self-destructive thirst to catch some disease and never feel anything anymore. He had thought then that having a romance with his former teacher was a brilliant idea, the antidote of his boredom and horrors he had survived. Albus was surprised by it, like himself. Maybe.

Or had he needed that too? One can never be sure about Dumbledore; his motivations are like the Gringotts vaults – lots of levels, and you can only just glimpse the first floors. Secrecy is above all.

Although, then – why should he have been thinking about the dark depths of Dumbledore’s character? He had had a different kind of need – sensual, animalistic, bold proof that he wasn’t made only from pain. He had had a need for delights on the verge of madness, feelings on the verge of breaking rules, the fall and the flight all rolled into one. He had needed someone who would hug him during the nights, whispering heart-lifting nonsense, someone who would make the nightmares full of disfigured faces go away. He had needed for someone who would make him laugh, someone who had known him, who had felt him, who could have seen something new and fresh in him, that the War couldn’t take away or deform beyond recognition.

He had burned and had risen from ashes in their bed every night.

Their affair hadn’t been long. Theseus had had responsibilities, and when his grief had barely scarred over, when some ghost-like, fragile and unsteady peace appeared in his soul, they had drifted apart. No, they hadn’t become friends or anything. They had only shared the same secret.

Dumbledore, being himself, tried to use it for his own gain, but Theseus had never been easy to manipulate. There were rumours about the nature of Dumbledore and Grindelwald’s relationship, which had made Theseus look at himself in the mirror more closely. Anyone could be evil, because evil is easier in the making than goodness: to kill is easier than to resurrect. As a veteran of The War he knew that perfectly well.

Although maybe the darkness inside people was the thing that attracted Albus. Or he just loved broken people, which was reportedly right too.  
Now, Theseus is unmade again: the funerals instead of weddings, scoldings instead of promotions, conflict instead of peace inside of him – the need to destroy, and that’s why he is in Berlin, where he can breathe in some unknown intoxicating smokes, drink more than he should, where he can sing songs, pine after strangers of unknown sex and gender (there are lots of people like that in Berlin) – and he doesn’t need to think here! He can just forget himself.

Leta would never have judged him, Leta is dead, Leta sacrificed herself, Leta has found a way to die, there is no more Leta – and he is still here.

He writes to Albus this absolutely vulgar, tasteless letter with lots of dirty, smutty hints so he will never answer, and then he writes one more letter like that, and another, and another one – and then he sends him a postcard: “Come here, where people like us are free, please, where pain has turned into diamonds and lights of nightclubs and cabarets. Find me.” He signs as “Underphoenix.”

He comes and finds him, to Theseus’s surprise.

His blue eyes look at him seriously and lightheartedly at the same time. Nobody has eyes like his – deep, amazing, real. Nobody else is there when Theseus needs them most, and nobody hugs like him.

Theseus likes hugs.

Theseus maybe loves Al too now.

Albus now loves him back.

Maybe.

**Author's Note:**

> I have tumblr - http://isamai.tumblr.com.  
> Come and chat, if you want.
> 
> I hope that prefix "under" is really means what I think, or the title is mess, because I wanted to translate the word I made up for it in russian - недофеникс - which could be translated as "not phoenix enough", and I'm not sure I did it right.
> 
> I generally think of betas and editors and translators as co-creators because the texts wouldn't be the same without their work, so it should be mentioned, of course.


End file.
